From RUSE delay to the Great IW Escape - News Roundup 24th April 2010

RUSE Delayed Until September

RUSE, Ubisoft's upcoming revolutionary RTS, has been delayed yet again. According to dev team's facebook account, we can expect it to hit some time in September. This is the fourth time that RUSE has been set back, apparently due to "massive feedback" from the public multiplayer beta. Still, it's set to introduce a mess upgrades and aggressive into the tired RTS formula- and we're willing to wait.

Glitched Conviction Achievement will soon be Patched

Many gamers were dismayed after grinding their way through Splinter Cell Conviction's brutal Realistic difficulty setting... only to discover that their well-deserved achievement was nowhere to be found. Worry not, though- Ubisoft are apparently aware of the problem and will be patching the achievement asap.

According to Xbox Live's SentUAMessage segment, the upcoming patch will retroactively detect the player's progress and award the achievement instantly. Thankfully, you won't have to complete it all over again.

Activision Register new Goldeneye Websites

The eagle-eyed trademark hunters at Superanuation have spotted two new Activision websites: Goldeneyegame.com and bloodstonegame.com. Considering that Bloodstone is the working title for a rumoured 'racing-based' Bond project, it appears that we can expect 007 to undertake another digital mission in the near future.

I wouldn't get too excited. This new game is likely to be a revival of Activision's nasty Goldeneye: Rogue Agent series. [VG247]

Loads more IW Devs go AWOL

Are you getting as bored of the ongoing Infinity Ward scandal as I am? I hope not, because seven more IW staff have gone AWOL since our last update (and are possibly oscar mike to Respawn Entertainment). The latest escapees include Senior designers Mohammad Alavi and Chad Grenier, two programmers and Charlie Wiederhold, former 3D Realms employee. This brings the current count up to seventeen (by my reckoning), at least seven of whom have already defected to West and Zampella's Respawn studio.

3D Realms developer George Broussard calls this a Black Day for Activision (and 3D Realms knows a thing or two about hard times- take his word for it!). Professional stater of the bleeding obviousSuperanalyst Michael Pachter has also weighed in, stating that Infinity Ward is 'dead', but gamers are unlikely to care enough for it to impact future Activision sales.

"The majority of consumers will either not know or will not care enough to shun future games."

Do you care enough about Activision's mismanagement to boycott future MW games? Do you even care enough about the situation to have read this far after weeks of overexposure? Psyched to see what Respawn has in store for us? Drop us a line in the comments![Explicit Gamer and Kotaku]

I'm rather excited by all of this to be honest, but then, as Pachter states, I'm probably in the minority. It's going to take a lot to trump Modern Warfare 2 for both parties, but I think with a large chunk of the leading creative talent, not to mention the financial backing of EA, anything Respawn create will be most curious to see indeed.